Bachmann makes light of her campaign missteps

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann made light of some of her campaign trail missteps in her first major speech since dropping out of the presidential race.

Bachmann said that running for president is "really one series of humiliations after another" in remarks to Republican activists gathered for the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

“I learned three things when I was running for president,” Bachmann continued. “First of all, I learned where John Wayne was born. That's very important. And then second, I learned the day that Elvis Presley was born. These are vital issues to our republic. And third I learned, never forget the three things that you learned.”

The first two things she learned were facts she famously got wrong along the way -- the third thing, of course, is a reference to what Texas Gov. Rick Perry forgot during a CNBC debate in Michigan last November.

But Bachmann did not seem to have forgotten many of the themes that undergirded the last few months of her presidential run, which were marked by daily attacks on President Obama’s foreign policy.

“Without a shadow of a doubt he world is a better off without bin Laden and without Gadhafi," Bachmann said, before adding: "These are tactical successes that don't begin to compare with the mess Barack Obama has made of the Middle East.”

Reviving a major theme of her candidacy, Bachmann attacked President Obama for the events of the Arab Spring, arguing that Obama should have defended Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak against the movement.

“Obama failed to stand by Mubarak,” Bachmann said, “and that helped fuel the revolution in Egypt, and it led to a regime that was based on Sharia Law, with 72 percent of the seats in the lower house in Egypt now occupied by the Brotherhood.”

Turning to another theme Bachmann hit often on the trail, she hit Obama for the pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq, and the planned drawdown in Afghanistan.

“Only Obama could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory and call it success,” Bachmann said.